Marijuana Use May Increase Risk of Hypertension-Related Death

Higher estimated cardiovascular risks are associated with marijuana use than cigarette smoking.

HealthDay News — According to a study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, marijuana increases by three-fold the risk for hypertension-related mortality.1

Barbara A Yankey, a PhD student from Georgia State University in Atlanta, and colleagues linked participants (≥20 years) who responded to questions on marijuana use during the 2005 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to data from the 2011 public-use linked mortality file of the National Center for Health Statistics.

The researchers found that of the 1213 eligible participants, 72.5% were presumed to be alive. Over 19,569 person-years of follow-up, the adjusted hazard ratios for death from hypertension among marijuana users was 3.42 (95% CI, 1.20 to 9.79), compared to non-marijuana users, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.04 for each year of marijuana use (95% CI, 1.00 to 1.07).

"We found higher estimated cardiovascular risks associated with marijuana use than cigarette smoking," Yankey said in a statement. "This indicates that marijuana use may carry even heavier consequences on the cardiovascular system than that already established for cigarette smoking. However, the number of smokers in our study was small and this needs to be examined in a larger study."